Sunday, November 7, 2010

The Plaid Voyeurism Project is please to report that Ms. Anne RIttgers and her Dad have successfully bagged their first deer while sporting PVP GENUINE ARTICLE Hand Painted Plaid Jackets. Best of luck from all of us at PVP-HQ, and keep 'em coming! We look forward to future posts.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Back from our European tour, back on American soil, here at PVP HQ, we are noticing a national trend in resurgence of enthusiasm for plaid voyeuristic tendencies. Just minutes ago, our virtual mailroom received this photograph:

Sent in, mid road trip, from Boulder, Colorado by PVP mobile correspondent, alias "Sparky" on his cross country migration from Boston to Los Angeles. We are still waiting to receive his official caption for this image, though it appears to be part of the facade decor of a second hand clothing retailer. This might be a first, in terms of posted documentation of the use of Plaid in the Architecture, which is a relatively new department for us. Our PVP-PITA (Plaid In The Architecture) interns (some of our most dedicated) are anxiously researching the archives to substantiate this claim. Results of their findings will be posted in the order they are discovered, so stay tuned. Thank You to Sparky for his road side submission, and from everyone here at PVP HQ, we wish you and your co-pilot smooth sailing for the remainder of your trip. Keep those eyes on the road, hands on the wheel. Safely First.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Here at PVP HQ, the buttons are practically bursting off our jackets with pride as we celebrate our Greatest Triumph to date: THE COMPLETION OF THE FIRST PAIR OF OFFICIAL PVP FATHER DAUGHTER HUNTING JACKETS!

A quick refresher in this continuing saga:

Back in the spring of 2008, the PVP Virtual Mailroom received an email inquiry from one Ms. Anne Rittgers of Duluth, Minnesota asking where to buy Blaze Orange Buffalo Plaid to make a jacket for her plaid loving father as a surprise for hunting season, which requires, by Minnesota law, that all hunters wear orange in the woods (rather than her dad's beloved red and black check.)

The PVP-WGU (Web Gopher Unit) went to work at once to uncover a retailer where Ms. Rittgers could buy such an item, but after 48 strait hours of relentless digging, they had exhausted every internet lead and nearly all of our coffee supply.

Unsuccessful, they passed off the task to the SRTF (Special Requests Task Force) Who were called into an emergency think tank to come up with a solution.

In after consultation with the PVP-ADD (Art and Design Department) and PVP-EOS (Extension and Outreach Services) It was decided that PVP would offer to hand paint a plaid pattern on a blaze orange textile of Ms. Rittgers own choosing. This service would be provided free of charge, with the only provision being that she send in photograph of her father wearing the Jacket and maybe one of him holding up his first successful trophy hunted wearing the hand painted plaid jacket. A few weeks later a box arrived from Minnesota containing several yards of day glow orange polar fleece.

A team of PVP Interns were immediately assigned to the task of hand painting the yardage, but summer being a slow time at PVP HQ, the interns, suffering from the infamous heat wave of '08 dropped their paintbrushes, hung up their plaid jackets, grabbed their binoculars and headed for the beach in search of plaid swimwear sightings.

When the autumn winds began to blow, back to HQ the interns did go... but back-to-school shopping season and fall fashion being wrought with plaid the way it always is, the interns were soon up to their ears in processing and overflow of plaid: shirts, jackets, backpacks, pencil cases, sneakers, scarves, etc... and again Ms. Rittger's project was placed on the back burner.

Embarrassingly enough, the project was not completed until well into the fall, alas, not in time for hunting season, and Ms. Rittger's father had to go yet another season without his Orange Plaid Jacket.

FAST FORWARD: August, 2010.

PVP-ONLINE has been on hiatus from posting sightings on the blog, due to extreme frequency of plaid usage in year round fashion. HQ currently wrapping up a fact finding mission in Tallinn, Estonia, focusing on the possibility/viability of opening a European Branch, when the above image posted of Ms. Rittgers and her dad is forwarded to us from the US office with URGENT in the subject line. The photo was instantly forwarded office-wide, resulting in 45 minutes of exuberant cheering and whistling in celebration of this a momentous occasion.

HIP HIP HOORAY!!!

From all of us at PVP, we wish Anne and her Dad a happy and safe and bountiful hunting season!

***For complete back story on this groundbreaking achievement, please visit the PVP archived postings from April 8, & 11, May 3, 2008.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Here at PVP, we've really been struggling, this fall, to come up with new and exciting criteria for plaid capture. There's just SO MUCH of it out there, its been down right daunting. SO, for the holidays, instrad of offering you 5,000 run of the mill plaid captures a day, were going to be selective and offer you the most bang for your buck. Quality, not quantity, but in this capture, you get both. Quite possibly our favorite capture yet, and the winner of PVP Holiday Challenge #1: 3 under one roof!

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Corner of Houston x Broadway, grey afternoon, almost raining. I spy subject on opposing side of crosswalk. The light is red. I wait preparing my camera phone. Walk sign appears and subject approaches, I pause, as if to dial a number, all the while keeping him in my sights as he draws closer. At just the middle of the White street stripes I snap him, but as the photo is revealed, a pedestrian in front of him has obscured his plaid shirt worn under an open jacket from view. I turn coolly on my heel and snap him from behind. Not the frontal I was hoping for, but it will suffice. I'm hungry and it's past lunchtime.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Our Interns have been busy busy bees raking through masses of summer snapshots now making their way into the annals of facebook photo abums. There is SO MUCH PLAID out there this fall, here at PVP, we have really had to develop quite a systematic discerning eye for which pics we feel are worthy of our blog site.

The pair of pictures below, made the cut due to A.) We miss Maine. B.) Foster, our subject, owns not one, but TWO plaid shirts, one in red and one in blue, and seems to alternate them at random, though we did, infact, assign a statistics intern to come up with a pattern, but to no avail. C.) This is the first of many times we are going to say we are no longer posting summer pictures, so don't pack up your bathing suits just yet....

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Mother and daughter outstrolling on Sunday on 8th Avenue. Daughter, anxious for the opportunity to sport her new fashionable plaid coat for fall, has tied it around her waist due to this afternoons unforcasted warmish weather. Better luck for fall fashions next week, my dear.

Friday, September 25, 2009

In the process snapping a pic of himself to post on facebook for the purpose of showing off his new specks to all his friends on facebook, Sparky, pictured left, has unknowingly placed himself in front of a plaid garment of unknown shape, size, and origin. This random act of plaid capture did not go unnoticed by our new CPFI (Collection of Plaid on Facebook Interns) who have been added to the staff here at PVP, just in time to ride the wave of the Back To School influx of plaid-as-mobile-uploads we have noticed on facebook since labor day. The monitoring of this new type of Plaid Voyerism is of such huge interest to us that we have added an entire wing on to Headquarters to house the new staff, and have made it our ONPFF (Official New Project For Fall)

Basically, our interns, both I.O. (In-Office), and A.L. (At Large), are combing the WWW 24 hours a day looking for previously uploaded pictures that people have taken of themselves for any number of reasons, and just happen to be wearing plaid and/or unknowingly capture it in the background.

Stay tuned for further updates. Thanks to Sparky for being our PPC (Plaid Poster Child).

Semi-Rare sighting of a male 30 something purple and black 1 inch check on Franklin Ave in Greenpoint. Usually, but not always, plaid of this variety is most often seen on female subjects or younger male subjects.

Why PVP?

Hello and Welcome to the Plaid Voyeurism Project (PVP.) The Plaid we're after is called Buffalo Plaid, though it is technically a check.

Here at PVP we are fascinated by the versatility of one pattern to span three centuries with its vast spectrum of users and uses. Buffalo Plaid is worn by young and old, city mice and country mice, in art museums and atop telephone poles, camoflauging the masses in a uniform of familiar anonymity.

BACK STORY

Buffalo Plaid is a weave of two colors (usually wool) in equal parts, holding no preference to positive or negitive space. Classically seen in red and black, current popularity has spawned all sorts of color combonations.

The American Heritage Dictionary states the origin of the title: Buffalo Plaid, as being the name given to the pattern by it's designer in the 1850's in honor of his herd of buffalo.

Buffalo Plaid has a wide variety of household names such as Vermont Plaid, Lumberjack Plaid, Backwoods Tuxedo, Redneck Check, and Hipster Burberry, to name a few, though it is most commonly regarded as "Hunter" Plaid.

Before the advent of modern fabrics and printing techniques, sport hunters in Northern forests used to wear Buffalo Plaid to obscure the outline of their silhouettes from their trophy's gaze. Buffalo Plaid is truly an American invention, not to be confused as a derivative a tartan from Scotland's Hunter Clan.

Though the pattern has become obsolete as camouflage in the woods, Buffalo Plaid has achieved an undeniable nostalgic status, evoking notions of rustic charm and romanticism of hunting accouterment of yore.

How We Do It.

You may have noticed an inconsistency in the quality of our collected images. Most of the pictures in our archive have been taken with sub-par camera phones in somewhat compromised light conditions, all the while maintaining the subtle finesse of a gazelle. However, when faced with a narrow capture window, subtlety is not always an option. Pride and ego are pushed aside for the glory of a focused capture.

PVP spies have been known to swoop in for the shot with all precision of a winning tetherball serve, then CLICK, turn, retreat, and recover to casual walking speed; ready to pounce again at a moments notice. This maneuver is known for obvious reasons as, "the Tether." Other popular methods of capture include: The "Faux-n Call," the "Shameless Paparazzi," and the "Canoe." (Use you imaginations.) New moves are being developed and field tested on a semi-regular basis.

Who Are We?

The profile of a "typical" PVP volunteer team member may include one or more of the following characteristics:

-Not much experience and/or skill with arcade games as a kid, though probably a champ in capture the flag.